They Do Not Have Nutrition's Foods: A History of Nutritional Deprivation among the Tribal Communities of Vizianagaram District, Andhra Pradesh, c. 1900–2023

Abstract

This paper is the first to open up a discussion in TH archives on the enduring problem of undernutrition among the Scheduled Tribe communities in the
Vizianagaram district, located in the northeastern segment of the Eastern Ghats in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Drawing on the ITDA administrative records, the
Census of India data(1901–2011), the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) tribal surveys, the National family Health Survey (NFHS) district fact sheets
and on the District Gazetteer of Vizianagaram (1982; revised 2004), it is argued that the severe malnutrition of the tribal communities Jatapu, Konda Dora, Savara,
and Gadaba in particular - in the district is not merely a failure of the present day governance; but is rooted in the much longer history of alienation that these
people have had to endure since colonial times land alienation, forest reservation, exclusion from markets, and the structural sociopolitical oppression of the hill
tracts through the Agency system. However, the article contends that a continuity of undernourishment from the 1920s to the 1960s can be observed, despite
numerous drivers having shifted imperceptibly during that era as historical depictions of these communities’ reveal. It is apparent from the recorded accounts on
the eating habits of poverty-stricken rural dwellers that a Ragi malt based diet, low in dietary diversity, did persist in the face of upheavals spanning over a
century; and at the same time undernutrition (stunting above 40%, anaemia above 59% among children, and chronic energy deficiency among more than 50% of
adult women) remains one of the largest public health issues and a historically most deeply embedded crisis. This paper proposes that history, in one sense, has
functioned as a straitjacket preventing the full moderation of how the structural origins of deprivation in the tribal region of Vizianagaram is enmeshed in its
future articulations might be thought through if history were seen as its structurally relevant problem.